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Against my better judgement, the lights in my apartment are connected to a wireless network controlled via an app. There are physical buttons, but they are located near the plugs, at ground level and often behind obstructions. When I leave, turning off the light requires digging my phone out of my pocket, typing in the unlock code, opening the app, waiting for it to detect the network, then tapping a button to turn off the light. I do all of this while standing an inch or so away from the old wall switch, the use of which would achieve the same result in a fraction of the time. As a result of this modernity, every time I leave the apartment, I feel the uncontrollable urge to make sure I’m listening to the title theme from French director Jacques Tati’s 1958 masterpiece Mon Oncle. I am, at that moment, Monsieur Hulot. Continue reading…

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Impatience is a trait that can be irritating, both in other people and oneself, and often results in disaster. In one of my previous articles, Don’t Be That Guy, I used the term “incapacitatingly impatient” to describe all the crazy things people do because they can’t bring themselves to wait long enough to make a choice that’s reasonable or considerate. One of the commenters aptly called it out as “the disease of our age.” Comics editor Carol Borden’s theory about teleportation is that if we were able to teleport places in 10 seconds but it took 20 seconds instead, we’d be tapping our feet impatiently wondering why it was taking so long.

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My roommate and I are obnoxious in the way that only best friends who live together can be. We have more inside jokes than books we’ve read (and as two girls who work in publishing and with five degrees in subjects focused on books between us, that says a lot). I like to think it’s endearing. We have a house rule for our apartment: we are delightful. (And we are, I promise.)

One of our most enduring inside jokes, though, is Laughing Hour. Laughing Hour came from Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Alexander, Worf’s son, takes lessons on how to laugh. The episode is riddled with bursts of “HA!” from Alexander at the most importune times, and in true 90s comedy fashion, to the utmost annoyance of his very serious and very noble father. It is delightful.Continue reading…

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I’ve been thinking about disreputable art more than usual lately, between the film adaptation of 50 Shades of Grey coming out and Jonathan Franzen franzenating about womenmucking up the whole respectable novel business. I can’t help but think of the history of the novel in Europe and North America. A tawdry form that was consumed by women, often written pseudonynmously by women and wholly damaging to one’s character, virtue and imagination. Art that makes us unsafe and disreputable has been around for a long time. Plato had concerns about the Mixolydian Mode’s effect on impressionable youths. And it’s made me think about my own reading that might be considered disreputable in the comics’ world. Sometimes it’s good to get back to our roots here at the Gutter. Continue reading…

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Director and producer Koji Wakamatsu has died. Wakamatsu had just been named filmmaker of the year at the 2012 Busan Film Festival. Wildgrounds has an interview, which Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats helped translate, Keyframe has an obituary and Subway Cinema had a brief overview of Wakamatsu’s career paralleling a 2008 retrospective in Los Angeles. “Divisive, exploitative, cruel, vengeful, erotic, political, provocative, avant-garde — Koji Wakamatsu is all these things, and a ridiculous amount more. A country bumpkin who wandered his way through the Yakuza and into one of the most prolific directing careers in Japan, Wakamatsu has created an unsurpassed, massive filmography of unique and disobedient works. While inextricably connected to the pinku eiga (Japanese soft-core film), Wakamatsu himself has always insisted that his films were something more.”

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“Commercial cinema has predictably chosen not to bite the hand that feeds it, so it’s simultaneously inspiring and also kind of embarrassing to see a movie like Seijun Suzuki’s Story of Sorrow and Sadness. Rarely has a mainstream commercial release been as rabid in its attack, and as thoughtful in its critique, of our dystopian mediascape. And it should embarrass current commercial filmmakers that one of the few movies to have something intelligent to say about today’s mediascape was made almost 40 years ago. By a 54 year old director. About golf.” More at Kaiju Shakedown.

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Time Out London shares its list of the 100 best Bollywood films–including selections by friend of the Gutter, Beth Watkins of Beth Loves Bollywood. (See the 10 films she selected and wrote about in the greater list here).